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The folks in Spain got mad and rid themselves of the sitting government. Or should I say: Went mad?

The end of the Conservative reign in Spain is seen as a setback for President Bush's for-reign policy. Clearly, the new crew in power will not make the White House social list. Instead of running with the bulls, the matadors have decided to kowtow to the terrorists, hoping to find themselves stable. Once their ox was gored, they voted against Bush. The larger question is, should their white flag raise a red flag? When the shotguns come out, will the Western World choose to lope rather than engage?

Yesterday, the Spanish government fought the barbarians shoulder to shoulder with our forces. Far from taking casual teas in bars alone at home, they shed noble blood along the parched byways of Iraq. Now, stout Cortez's heirs have come down from their peak of darin' and voted for a new nadir  the Yellow Party. Gone is the proud armada, in its place a pathetic armadillo, fat and slow with a thick skin.

The last two and a half millennia of Western history have featured an almost comical rotation, whereby each principality in Europe took a turn helming the steamroller of civilization. Greece, Rome, Spain, Turkey, Austria, Hungary, England, Germany, Russia: We think of each enclave as having enjoyed a fleeting honeymoon of dominance. Yet, progress along certain moral and scientific tracks, mostly laid out in the prophecies of Isaiah and his compatriots, continued  and continues  largely unabated.

Today the vanguard of this triumphal march of history is in the United States and Israel. Few have considered in sufficient depth and nuance this simple poignant truth, that our alliance with Israel is not a regional phenomenon, it is powering the very engine of modern history. One instance of this is the fact that in recent decades Israel has become virtually the equal of the United States in advancing the thresholds of medical and agricultural technology.

To examine this thought from another angle, we might say this: the impulse of the American academic and the European epidemic is to seek a secular view of history. The problem is that the enemy is Islam, which is self-consciously squaring off against Judaism and Christianity. Thus, we are forced into fighting a war whose logic is determined by the Biblical view of reality. To counter the Moslem vision, we help Jews resettle their land after a two-thousand year hiatus  so, despite ourselves, we are compelled to guarantee the function of the most amazing prophecy in history.

Indeed, the echoes of the Divine Comedy are unavoidable when we hear the hubristic puffery of the intellectuals, statesmen and soldiers who are only too eager to explain how it is they that make it all happen. The idea that it was G-d's work is primitive, they say.

You call that a prophecy? In fact, it was an outlandish and doomed prediction. How absurd to prognosticate that the land would lie in waste and desolation for thousands of years! How ludicrous that it could be made to bloom again! How ridiculous that a nation could survive in dispersal! How insane that they could return! How irresponsible to claim that they would be strong again!

As to the fact that it all ended up happening: well, that was us, you see. We are smart. We are courageous. We are strong. Not like those old fuddy-duddy Rabbis who peddled that silly book while they paddled their leaky craft through the perilous shoals of exile.

This brings us back to our day, to the reality of the humble. Are we disappointed to see European courage span yards, not miles? Where we thought we might see Esthers of modernity, rising to the moment, we find instead that a siesta has been declared. The Spanish voter has seen his news and made his snap judgment. While the Arab pursues his forty virgins, the Spaniard will contribute with forty winks. The alarums of war go unheeded as the armadillo resumes his hibernation.

We are the hyper nation, we Americans, we Israelis. We are visited in New York, we return the favor in Kabul. Hit our Pentagon and your statue falls in the Square of Baghdad. Blow up a restaurant in Jerusalem for lunch and you will eat missiles in Gaza for dinner.

We hear the call of history and dare to take our stand. The terror rises like a great foaming wave, but it will spend itself at our shores and be swallowed again by the sea.

Be strong. Stay the course. Let the cowards crawl. Courage and vigor will prevail.